Black children are being left in the care system rather than being adopted, according to Martin Narey, the government's adoption adviser in 2011. Photograph: Pixland/Corbis

National Adoption Week highlights the need of children around the country who are looking for new homes.

Southwark is one of the largest inner-city boroughs in London and has all of the challenges associated with a densely populated area, including drug and alcohol problems, poverty and poor mental health.

As a result we have one of the highest populations of looked after children in London – around 560 at any one time – a significant proportion of whom are looking to be placed into permanent, loving homes. We also have a very racially diverse community and this is also reflected in our looked after children population, including increasing numbers of mixed heritage children.

This has left Southwark council's adoption team facing unprecedented challenges to find the right placements at the right time with the right carer.

Previous marketing campaigns have had some success. Over the last three years the adoption team has successfully seen 60 children through to adoption in new homes and approved 40 families for adoption.

Overall, calls to our enquiries helpline have also risen, but we are finding this is still not enough and have taken the decision to launch a revitalised campaign to pro-actively seek out potential new parents for children we have in need of families.

The campaign aims to raise the council's profile; if adopters aren't sure about coming to us, we are going to go out into our communities to find them.

Reaching out to more black adopters

One of the major challenges we face is recruiting more black adopters. Although the largest group of children we have is white, our second and third largest groups are black African and black Caribbean.

There are a number of reasons for this, mainly that black communities tend to be smaller so there are statistically less potential adopters, but there can also be an inherent distrust of social services and a tradition of informal arrangements within families and communities to look after children rather than through the formal process of legal adoption.

As well as targeted media campaigns we will be actively engaging leading members in these communities in our borough by visiting church groups, local forums and any other organisations we can find to encourage people to consider becoming adopters.

Social workers have already started to attend church meetings for (mainly) black communities and the team recently had a table at a Black History Month event.

There are plans to meet with an Eritrean women's group and we are researching other avenues such as websites aimed at black men and women.

Misconceptions about adoption

The other main obstacles to recruiting potential adopters are the rumours, misconceptions and myths surrounding adoption: who will and won't be considered for adoption; the amount of scrutiny and red tape prospective parents have to go through and an increasing number of scare stories about parents who have been left hanging by local authorities once the papers have been signed.

We need to explode these myths and hear from the people who really know what it is like to welcome children into their families – which is why we will be promoting our past adopters as case studies, in the media and particularly online where the majority of people considering adopting will make their initial searches.

Promoting these experiences is key to getting through to prospective parents the joys, as well as the challenges in adopting children.

Our final aim is to strengthen and enhance our service. We already have a strong adoption service, rated as "good" by Ofsted in 2011 with some areas classed as outstanding, but we aren't complacent and will again be engaging with our current adopters, getting feedback on the good and not-so-good parts of the service and building it around their needs.

We want to initially increase the number of enquiries and improve the conversion rate into initial visits, but ultimately to dramatically increase our pool of approved adopters over the year.

Councils like Southwark are facing difficult times but we can't let this become an excuse for failing our vulnerable children and our adoption team will do whatever is necessary to reduce the time our looked after children spend in care.

Our top five adoption myths

• You can't adopt if you are over 40.

• You can't adopt if you are single.

• You can't adopt if you are an unmarried couple.

• You can't adopt if you are a gay couple/single.

• You can't adopt if you work full time.

Alasdair Smith is acting head of the looked after children's service at Southwark council

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